Overwatch League launches with a bang and dominates Twitch viewing figures

UPDATE 17TH JANUARY: Activision has said more than 10 million viewers tuned in during Overwatch League's opening week, with more than 437,000 online at the same time during the opening Dallas Fuel vs. Seoul Dynasty match.

For several hours, Overwatch League dominated Twitch viewing figures, dwarfing League of Legend's and PUBG's most popular streamers.

The Overwatch League follows a dozen professional teams headquartered at major cities around the world, although not necessarily made up of people from those cities or actually housed there. They have rich owners (buying an Overwatch League team reportedly costs $20m) who have bought in the best players from around the world, as the top football teams do in the Premier League and so on. London Spitfire's team, for example, is owned by esports powerhouse Cloud9 and all the players are South Korean.

The Spitfires haven't played yet, incidentally. They play Florida Mayhem today at 10pm GMT.

Last night's winners were Los Angeles Valiant, thumping San Francisco Shock 4-0; Los Angeles Gladiators, creaming Shanghai Dragons 4-0; and Seoul Dynasty, overcoming Dallas Fuel 2-1. You can catch up with the matches on the Overwatch League Twitch channel, and I've popped a couple of highlights below.

Just as in other sports, Overwatch players can wear their favourite team's unique colours in the game to show their support. London Spitfire's strip is the nicest, naturally, maybe followed by Florida Mayhem's - tonight's match should be easy on the eye, then!